Seattle Innovation Startup Competition (SISC)

For entrepreneurs to enroll the competition: click here.

For general audience tickets: click here.

Introduction

SISC is a pitch competition organized by Seattle Entrepreneurship Club (SEC) and Global Innovation Exchange (GIX). The mission is to provide a platform for local tech ventures to connect with broader start-up community in the Greater Seattle Area. Competition judges are from local incubators and leading tech companies. You will have the opportunity to promote your start-up ideas/projects in front of local entrepreneurship experts and get access to potential business partnership and investment.

Competition Theme

Our theme for this year is “Better Life, Better World”.  We highly welcome projects focusing on positive social impact. Your project could be from any of these industries but not limited to: AI, blockchain, education, robotics, e-commerce, healthcare, big data, new energy, etc.

Agenda & Timeline

Pre-Pitch

· Project submission deadline:  November 8th

· Selection for 10 finalist projects:  November 10th

Pitch day

2:00pm ~ 2:30pm : Introduction and keynote speech

2:30pm ~ 4:30pm: 5 minutes pitch/demo and 3 minutes Q&A for each team

4:30pm ~ 5pm:  Judging

5:00pm ~ 5:30pm: Announce winners and prizes

5:30pm: Social time

3 teams will be selected and take-home prize money to help empower your ventures.

Parking Information

The easiest way to enter is to use 124th Ave NE. Spring District has many construction sites, but businesses are open. Dive to the traffic light at the intersection of 124th Ave NE and NE District Way, take a turn onto NE District Way and then take your first right. There is a garage below the building where you are welcome to park. The entrance to the garage will be on your left.

Prizes

First Place:

$5,000 cash + 3 free H1B applications (free of lawyer fees)

One month trial coworking place for team of 4 by OnePiece Work - Seattle

Second Place:

$1,000 cash + 2 free H1B applications (free of lawyer fees)

Two weeks trial coworking place for team of 4 by OnePiece Work - Seattle

Third Place:

$500 cash + 1 free H1B applications (free of lawyer fees)

Two weeks trial coworking place for team of 4 by OnePiece Work - Seattle

( Coworking place may not be immediately available when requesting. In this case, OnePiece Work would put you in the priority waiting list)

Keynote Speaker

Dave Parker

Dave Parker is a 5X Founder, Investor, Board, and Advisory Board Member for dozens of companies. He’s the WTIA Board Chair for Startup Programs in Seattle and runs a founder development program called 6 Month Startup - Ideation to Revenue. He helps companies from launch to exit - having exited 9 companies. Formerly the Senior VP of Programs at UP Global (Startup Weekend + Startup America) that was purchased by Techstars in 2015. He currently manages a Family Office Fund. 

 

Judge 

Jay Bartot

Passionate serial technology entrepreneur having been a part of half a dozen starts over 20 years (co-founded 4 startups with 5 acquisitions). The startups have spanned a number of different verticals including eCommerce search, online advertising and metrics, travel, medical informatics and mobile videography. Jay is currently CTO of Madrona Venture Labs where he and his colleagues work on spinning up new company ideas, applying thoughtful vetting processes to weed out the good from the bad and ultimately working with founding teams to take the best ideas out into the wild.

 

Xuan Chen

Dr. Xuan Chen: Vice President of Arm, Managing Director of Greater China Strategic Investments, Managing Director of ARM-HOPU Innovation Fund and co-founder of ARM ecosystem accelerator. Dr. Chen has about 20 years’ experience in high-tech industry, including strategic investment and partnership, business development and product development in Cloud and IoT. He received Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Southern California, MBA from University of Massachusetts Amherst and Bachelor in Computer Communications from Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication. Dr. Chen is an active promoter of entrepreneurship and investments in high-tech. He serves as founding board member of Seattle Venture Investment Alliance (SVIA), judge and mentor to startup competitions organized by US-China Association of High-Level Professionals (UCAHP), Silicon Valley Innovation Entrepreneurship Forum (SVIEF), TechNode, Demo China, Seattle Entrepreneur Club (SEC) and others. In 2017, Dr. Chen was named Top 100 Rising Stars by Global Corporate Venturing (GCV). 

 

Blake Hannaford

Before graduate study, Blake Hannaford held engineering positions in digital hardware and software design, office automation and medical image processing. At Berkeley he pursued thesis research in multiple target tracking in medical images and the control of time-optimal voluntary human movement. From 1986 to 1989 he worked on the remote control of robot manipulators in the Man-Machine Systems Group in the Automated Systems Section of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech. He supervised that group from 1988 to 1989. Since September 1989, he has been at the University of Washington in Seattle except for work at Google Life Sciences from 2014-15. He was awarded the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Early Career Achievement Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Hannaford’s currently active interests include haptic displays on the internet, surgical biomechanics and biologically based design of robot manipulators. He co-founded a spinout company, Applied Dexterity, in 2013. 

He is currently splitting his time between his research collaborations and students at ECE, and the UW Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) where he is teaching and developing a new masters program in robotics: Master of Science in Technology Innovation (Robotics). He is currently splitting his time between his research collaborations and students at ECE, and the UW Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) where he is teaching and developing a new masters program in robotics: Master of Science in Technology Innovation (Robotics).

 

Mark Neuhausen

Mark Neuhausen is a technology entrepreneur with ~40 years experience successfully launching new products and services for small-to-large companies. First career as a defense contractor rising to a VP responsible for a $300M annual business providing cradle-to-grave development through field support for the world's most advanced remote airborne reconnaissance systems. Second career in "new" fields of networking, digital telecommunications, and cloud that built on his first career experiences. Worked at small and large companies developing new services and growing customer bases. Now applying his knowledge and experience at Hewlett Packard Enterprise as a Chief Technologist. Also, mentoring, working with, and investing in technology startups to help them grow and succeed. 

 

Gary R Ritner

Gary Ritner has been involved in the financial services industry for over 40 years. For the last 30 years he has been self-employed in the investment banking field. His three main activities are raising funds for early stage companies, business brokerage, and consulting. Prior he was a stockbroker. He has helped fund over thirty companies. He has brokered numerous business including a distribution company, a door manufacturer, and construction company. Presently, he is brokering a manufacturer of material handling equipment. He is the founder and Manager of the Puget Sound Venture Club, pugetsoundvc.com, a forum to review early-stage venture opportunities. Since the founding in 1985, present and past members, using the Club resources and their own contacts, have invested approximately $102 million in over 770 companies. Membership is restricted to accredited investors that have a minimum net worth, not including residence, of $1 million and some history of venture investing. 

 

Kevin Yu

Kevin is currently Director of Engineering at Okta. Prior to this, Kevin was the VP of Engineering for Azuqua, the leading B2B workflow automation company. Azuqua was acquired by Okta in March 2019. In 2013 Kevin co-founded Socedo. Socedo used BigData/AI to extract leads from social media. It serve hundreds of companies including Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Lenovo etc. Socedo was acquired by Azuqua in June 2018. Prior to this, Kevin was a engineering manager at Microsoft helping ship SQL Server, BizTalk Server etc. enterprise products. In his spare time, Kevin is a mentor at TechStars, Founder Institute, and an advisor to Seattle SEC and UW CEN. 

Final List

Genemod 

Genemod is a software startup developing the first unified platform for life scientists and researchers to collaborate and standardize their scientific research. Built for scientists, our web-based tools fit into the way individuals and teams already do their work, from restriction digest software to project and inventory management. Think Salesforce or Atlassian for the life sciences sector with a Slack business model. Genemod has validated the technology and market need through partnerships with research institutions and is fundamentally transforming the $19B scientific software industry to make pre-clinical, bench research efficient and reproducible. 

AIDA Health Care

 “AIDA is a HIPAA-compliant SaaS platform tackling a $70B/year patient overstay and readmission problem. AIDA is focused on improving the patient transition process by connecting acute and post-acute providers. AIDA helps providers meet value-based care guidelines and improve patient care outcomes through unique data points. Painting a complete picture of patient’s episodes of care and making the right data available across multiple types of providers.” 

Revetz

Rivetz is rebuilding the security model to allow the user to put control back where it belongs into the hands of the owners of the data.

Wissee Technologies, Inc 

WISER is an AI-powered knowledge platform providing reliable analytics and competitive insights to investors. Grounded in the most advanced and proprietary machine learning and natural language processing algorithms, we focus on  Unlocking the vast wealth of information hidden in unstructured data Reinforcing machine insights with deep domain expert knowledge WISER is a force to extend human vision to see new opportunities and create more valuable insights. Its mission is to facilitate an easier access to insightful knowledge, promote better-informed business actions, and prompt sustainable economic growth. 

FuncStack 

The App installer for Cloud.  FuncStack is the best way to find, share, install and manage software on Cloud.   FuncStack packages everything, including the software, cloud infra and Ops actions, into a single git-based package and enables you to install/manage/uninstall through CLI.  

RESTMESH TECHNOLOGIES LLC 

Leverages the advanced cloud and mobile technologies to transform the hospitality industry by providing the state-of-the-art POS system to enrich the dining experience from every perspective and help small or medium size restaurant business thrive and stay ahead of the market. 

Minnow 

Minnow is building a network of IoT-enabled food delivery and pickup stations (called Pickup Pods™) to provide affordable, convenient, and environmentally sustainable food delivery in urban areas. Minnow’s delivery and pickup platform provides office buildings and other workplaces with a state-of-the-art food amenity, while enabling restaurants to increase off-premise sales profitably. Minnow offers an order-of-magnitude reduction in delivery costs, urban congestion, and carbon emissions. Minnow is a venture-funded company that operates at the intersection of food, real estate, and technology. To learn more, visit https://minnow.me/. 

Soon Tech - Popark

Popark is a brand new intelligent parking advertising product developed by Soon tech in ChengDu China, which integrated with traditional parking lock and can put various advertisement on parking space. 

Simple Intelligence 

We started the company to figure out the different verticals in which deep learning will be useful.

We use deep learning for protection and creation of trademark, ip and design. 

Zeacon 

Zeacon is the easiest way to find something to do with a single glance. Discover events, experiences, and offers in real-time. 

Vinci

Vinci is a company focusing on providing early education to every child in China. We will use various methods to identify individuality from learning activities and make personalized study plan. We committed to becoming the largest interactive education platform in China. Our job is to enlighten every child in English study! 

Co-Hosted By

SEC

Seattle Entrepreneurship Club is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization initiated and established in April 2008 by a group of professionals and entrepreneurship enthusiasts in the Greater Seattle area. It is a community communication platform with entrepreneurship as its main purpose, based in Seattle but with an international vision. Entirely by volunteers, the SEC aims to unite around Seattle high-level entrepreneurial talent and the team to North America, to build a team for entrepreneurial talent and, venture investors, and various professional personage exchanges and cooperation platforms. SEC offers a variety of services to help these parties succeed, and to promote the development of entrepreneurial activity in Seattle and North America. At the same time, we also cooperate with organizations in different industries and fields in China and the Seattle area to promote the exchange of enterprises, talents, and culture between China and America. Since its establishment, Seattle Entrepreneurship Club has attracted and developed nearly 2,000 members of entrepreneurship enthusiasts and continues to grow.

GIX

GIX (Global Innovation Exchange) is a new model of experiential education and practice to develop leaders in innovation. Starting with our project and team-based graduate degree programs, GIX will grow to include a broad array of innovation experiences for students, executives, and working professionals. Founded by the University of Washington, Tsinghua University, and Microsoft, GIX is a global collaboration between leading academic and cross-sector partners.